A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the project across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
